About eight years ago we saw a few small hotel bloggers make their debut online, talking about properties, where to stay, amenities to rave about, room categories to avoid and so forth. A great example of a hotel blog that started hyperlocal in Boston and grew enormously in the past decade is friend Mark Johnson’s HotelChatter.
Between then and today, there are myriads of bloggers on the internet writing up anything from favorite hotel roundups, and top 10 destinations, to exposing bed bug infested hotels and other popular topics relating to the travel industry. As PR people we already know there are some bloggers that have impeccable ethics, and others not so much. It’s up to us to decide who to pitch to.
Without assigning blame to anyone, how do you pitch bloggers in the new decade? Earlier on, it was easy because bloggers did not have the prestige they have today. These days, bloggers are well respected writers, often times editors of high-end publications that are no longer in business. Many senior level writers have left magazines and newspapers to start their own blog and online presense.
The travel/hotel blog boom is still going strong. Pitching bloggers is getting harder. Crafting a clever angle is more important than ever. Establishing relationships with the bloggers takes more time now than it used to. It’s all online too, you have to follow them on Twitter, comment of their FB posts and show interest in their content. It’s a new process that PR people have to embrace when pitching bloggers for hospitality clients (and all clients, for that matter).
One thing is relatively unique for writers and bloggers in the travel and hospitality industry: they don’t leave it! So, happy pitching!